Holocaust Resources in Illinois

In 1990 Illinois became the first state to mandate a unit of instruction in the schools on the Holocaust. As a public librarian I have helped students find books and information on the Holocaust often in direct response to this mandate. I have also helped many adults, a few of which expressed concern to me over the rising tides of hate and intolerance in the world and the importance of learning the lessons of the Holocaust. After talking with people of all ages I am reminded of how essential it is for Illinois libraries to have the materials and knowledge of resources on the Holocaust to help promote understanding. Librarians should be aware of some of the noteworthy Illinois organizations and resources on the Holocaust. And from my professional activities as a book reviewer on the Holocaust I thought it might be useful to suggest some basic reference sources on the Holocaust.

Part One: Organization and Resources

The primary Holocaust organization in Illinois is the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois (4255 West Main Street, Skokie, IL 60076, 847-677-4640). The Foundation runs the Holocaust Museum in Skokie, which houses artifacts and material documenting the Holocaust: much of it donated by the survivors residing in Illinois. Visitors, for instance, will find examples of the Jewish star people were forced to wear during the Nazi era. There is a concentration camp uniform. There are Jewish identity documents. The museum provides a clear explanation with each display. Enlarged photos provide further graphic impact. On any given weekday busloads of students visit the museum. They are given a presentation and tour by docents who are often Holocaust survivors. I have talked with teachers who have been deeply moved by the thoughtful and heartfelt responses of their students upon visiting the museum.

The affiliate groups of the Foundation include the Holocaust Association of Child Survivors (HACS) and the Association of Children of Holocaust Survivors (ASHS), which provide programming for the Foundation. The speakers provided by the Foundation are not limited to the walls of the museum. The Foundation sponsors visits of survivors and liberators to area organizations. The museum also loans out materials. For instance, the Harold Washington Library, recently had a display on the Holocaust provided by the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois.

The Holocaust Memorial Foundation has a small but growing library: the Lachman Documentation and Research Library that houses books, periodicals and videos. It contains a full set of volumes on the Nuremberg trials.

It was the Holocaust Memorial Foundation that pushed to have the mandated unit of instruction put into the books on Jan. 1, 1990.

The Chicago region of the Anti-Defamation League, commonly known as ADL, (309 W. Washington, Chicago, IL 60606, 312-782-5080) conducts an active Holocaust educational program throughout the state. For the past seven years, "A World of Difference" program has been provided to the schools. The program makes use of the Holocaust to stress the importance of tolerance and multi-culturalism. According to the ADL, this anti-bias program goes into elementary, secondary schools and colleges. It provides training to enable educators to help students confront prejudice and bigotry in their own world. It provides peer training for students. ADL also provides fact finding manuals, booklets and videos. Two of the many high quality publications that libraries should consider for purchase are High-Tech Hate: Extremist Use of the Internet, a needed book on a topic of great interest and concern to teens and adults, and the pamphlet, Holocaust Denial: A Pocket Guide, which provides detailed responses to the tired and malicious arguments offered by some well-financed groups that the Holocaust never occurred. The ADL literature emphasizes that to stop hate one must begin early on by teaching the young.

There has been a misconception that the ADL solely fights against anti-Semitism. In fact, the ADL fights racism and prejudice of all kinds. The ADL has been instrumental in putting "hate crimes" into the law books. The ADL tries to make sure that the lessons of the Holocaust are not forgotten. On the ADL Internet site there are news releases on Holocaust-related issues. The ADL puts out a biannual magazine on the Holocaust called Dimensions: A Journal of Holocaust Studies. The journal provides short book reviews of

*Paul Kaplan, Public Services Coordinator, Lake Villa Public Library District.

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recent literature on the Holocaust for young people and adults. There are also feature articles. Recent issues, for instance addressed a variety of concerns from the Swiss banks and the Holocaust to a moving speech given to the ADL by Miep Gies, the brave woman who hid Anne Frank's family, on the meaning of Ann Frank.

Librarians can request a catalog of publications, including the magazine Dimensions from the Nationwide office of the ADL by calling toll free 1-800-343-5540. The ADL Web site address is http://www.adl.org.

One of the unique nationwide organizations that opened a Chicago regional office in 1990 is Facing History and Ourselves (222 North LaSalle, Suite 1414, Chicago, IL 60601, 312-726-4500). Founded in Boston in the mid-1970s this organization has been involved in designing special curriculum that shows the relevance of the Holocaust for students today. One of its prime roles is to encourage students to break down the barriers of prejudice and intolerance that they observe and experience. The organization seeks to spur moral development. The Chicago branch provides special training for educators who reached out to more than 65,000 students. According to their literature, the Facing History and Ourselves organization involves the entire community, including parents, police officers, community activists and other citizens.

The organization produces booklets that may be of interest to librarians. The Internet site, http://www.facing.org provides information on the latest Facing History and Ourselves publications. Libraries should consider ordering their fine resource book, Holocaust and Human Behavior: A Resource Guide.

Illinois is fortunate to have so many large libraries with strong Holocaust-related holdings. To detail these collections would require a separate article in itself but one library primarily devoted to Judaica and the Holocaust deserves special mention. The Asher Library of the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies (618 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL, 312-922-8248) is one of the largest Judaica libraries in the country. For many users it is a undiscovered jewel among Illinois libraries. The Asher Library is open to the public, and students from the Chicago area researching Holocaust topics often visit. Membership which involves a comparatively nominal fee provides borrowing privileges. Although the first responsibility of the library is to its own faculty and students, the librarians at the Asher Library fondly call it "Chicago's Jewish Public Library."

The Holocaust collection of the Asher Library contains a large run of "Yizkor" or memorial books of Jewish communities that were destroyed in the Holocaust. Genealogists, among others, have found these books to be a valuable source of information. These priceless books, usually written in Yiddish and Hebrew, are among the treasures of the Asher Library collection. To get a good sampling of the importance of these memorial books, English languages readers are referred to a readily accessible book, From a Ruined Garden: the Memorial Books of Polish Jewry, by Jack Kugelmass and Jonathan Boyarin. The Asher Library contains a complete collection of various sets of the Nuremberg trial transcripts. Visitors also can find a set of the annual Yad Vashem Studies, the yearbook of the main Holocaust memorial museum, library and archives in Israel. These studies have fine essays written in English on different aspects of the Holocaust. The total holdings of the library number 100,000 volumes. Among their periodicals readers will find journals devoted to the Holocaust. Because the staff at the Asher Library is not a large one — though they are experts in the field — Illinois librarians are asked to use discretion when referring patrons. Senior reference librarian Dan Sharon is a font of information himself, having answered countless questions about the Holocaust over the years.

The Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies is also the home of the famous Spertus Museum, which contains more than 10,000 objects, artifacts and works of art focusing on Jewish life and history. A portion of the museum is devoted to the Holocaust. The Zell Holocaust Memorial pre-dates the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., and it is the nation's first permanent museum exhibition on the Holocaust. A concentration camp uniform, a canister of the gas used to kill Jews are among the display. But the significance of the items is fully explained and the items are presented in such a way as to promote reflection. The able staff of the museum offer Holocaust workshops for students and the Memorial is a frequent stop for students learning about the Holocaust.

Subject specialist librarians know that the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies has some noted scholars. One the chief scholars of the Holocaust is Spertus faculty member Dr. Byron Sherwin, who edited a thought-provoking collection of essays on the Holocaust titled Encountering the Holocaust.

The Spertus Web site address is http://www.spertus.edu. The Spertus Institute is located a few blocks away from the Harold Washington Library in Chicago.

These are just a few of the key Illinois Holocaust organizations.

Part 2. Some Basic Sources for Building Collections

The literature on the Holocaust is enormous. How does a librarian pick and choose among the vast literature available? I would like to suggest some basic reference sources that librarians may find helpful in

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building a collection of books on the Holocaust. I want to stress that this is in no way a comprehensive listing. Although I have a background in Judaic studies and I have reviewed Holocaust literature for the past 10 years, I am continually amazed by the variety and depth of the works this important subject engenders.

In this section I have included some titles for students. Publishers have recognized that there are important lessons to be learned by students about the Holocaust. Some of these reference works may be out of print but they can still be found in any large collection.

The basic tools for building a collection are bibliographies. There are a number of standard bibliographies, such as The Holocaust: an Annotated Bibliography and Resource Guide, by David M. Szonyi, and Bibliography on Holocaust Literature, by Abraham J. Edelheit and Hershel Edelheit. Both are well known in their field. The American Library Association published one of the most accessible bibliographies in The Holocaust: an Annotated Bibliography, by Harry J. Cargas. Librarians might prefer the Cargas book. Though it is not out of print, the Cargas book is a special one as it seems to speak to a wide audience with its ample and evaluative annotations. A more recent bibliographic overview is Holocaust Literature: A Handbook of Critical, Historical, and Literary Writings, edited by Saul S. Friedman. For the latest reviews of new books and articles standard indexes provide access. Students who use academic libraries may find the Index to Jewish Periodicals helpful as an additional index to English language articles on the Holocaust.

The standard encyclopedia on Judaica and on the Holocaust is the 16-volume Encyclopaedia Judaica. Though there has been much research in the past 30 years this encyclopedia remains a good first stop look at a subject. The supplement volumes provide additional insight. In 1990 the four volume Encyclopedia of the Holocaust was published. It has become a standard reference source that can be found at many libraries in Illinois. An excellent new four-volume encyclopedia with briefer entries for middle, high school and public libraries is The Holocaust, edited by Geoffrey Wigoder. Some public libraries have put this set in their circulating collection. The articles are well illustrated and easy to read.

An atlas is a good way for students to get a visual picture of the enormity of the Holocaust. Geographical sites are continually referred to in Holocaust literature, and the Holocaust sometimes took different forms in different countries. Fortunately, The United States Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. has co-published many needed books, including the Historical Atlas of the Holocaust, which contains multi-color maps and ample explanation of events and figures of the Holocaust. Atlas of the Holocaust, by Martin Gilbert, is also a good source. Gilbert, an Oxford scholar who writes for a popular audience, has been one of the most prolific authors on the Holocaust, and his Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe during the Second World War, a standard source, is composed of many striking Jewish testimonies.

Students may need a specialized dictionary for some of the words found in Holocaust literature. Many books have a brief glossary in them, but for those books that do not or for students seeking more information Dictionary of the Holocaust: Biography, Geography and Terminology, by Eric Joseph Epstein and Philip Rosen, and History of the Holocaust: A Handbook and Dictionary, by Abraham J. Edelheit and Hershel Edelheit, are high-quality reference sources.

There are many good anthologies on the Holocaust. A new multi-volume series from UXL, a division of the large library publisher Gale, Voices of the Holocaust will provide many insights for intermediate and high school students. Excerpts from documents and works on the Holocaust are the basis of these volumes. A good one-volume anthology with a sterling annotated bibliography for students is Bearing Witness: Stories of the Holocaust. For teachers and parents in search of methods and sample questions for presenting the Holocaust through literature to young people, the oversize paperback volume, The Spirit That Moves Us: A Literature-Based Resource Guide, Teaching About the Holocaust and Human Rights, by Rachel Quenk in association with The Holocaust Human Rights Center of Maine, is highly recommended.

There are many magazines devoted to the Holocaust. The ADL publication, Dimensions: A Journal of Holocaust Studies, is certainly an important one. Librarians should be aware of the journal of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in California. Response: the Wiesenthal Center World Report has a circulation of more than a quarter million. It addresses worldwide issues connected with the Holocaust. If monitors hate crime activities. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has an excellent educational Web site at http://www.wiesenthal.com.

The U.S. Holocaust Museum, which recently welcomed its 10 millionth visitor, has provided a spur to some essential Holocaust publications. The re-publication, for instance, of a classic that has not always been readily available is I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children's drawings and poems from Terezin Concentration Camps 1942-1944. It comes with a fine new foreword by novelist Chaim Potok. The museum has also inspired such solid paperback titles as these well illustrated histories: The World Must Know: the History of the Holocaust as told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, by Michael Berenbaum for adult

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readers, and Tell Them We Remember: The Story of the Holocaust, by Susan D. Bachrach, which is a fine overview for young adults.

The U.S. Holocaust Museum also has produced a key Internet site at http://www.ushmm.org that provides links to other Holocaust sites. This site is really a storehouse of information. Teachers and librarians can find information on how to approach standard questions on the Holocaust.

Visitors to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum are stimulated to ponder America's role during these years. Current volumes of the American Jewish Year Book have portions devoted to the ongoing issues raised by the Holocaust and the continued presence of anti-Semitic and hate activities. Librarians often use the directory information found in the American Jewish Year Book. Students researching American reaction to the Holocaust can find useful information in the American Jewish Year Book volumes issued during the Holocaust period.

A couple of noteworthy books on the subject of American reaction to the Holocaust that have been recently reissued are While Six Million Died, by Arthur Morse, and Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941-1945, by David Wyman. The Morse title is highly critical of America's role and raised fire storm when it originally appeared some 30 years ago. Wyman's book is more scholarly. A book that presents reaction to these books and alternate viewpoints is FDR and the Holocaust, edited by Verne W. Newton.

It would be fitting to conclude this article with a few stories. Young people do not always recognize the true giants that live in their midst. Growing up in Illinois I was fortunate to find a friend who shared my interest in books. His father was a Holocaust survivor. The books on the Holocaust I read became very real to me when I learned the incredible story of his father. Somehow his father, Edmund Lichtenberg, had survived the horrors of a concentration camp. He had escaped death countless times. He was a person of tremendous courage. And yet one would never guess the privations he had endured. He was so kind and modest and always ready to listen to young people. He passed away a few years ago without writing down his story. But his tale reverberates through the literature of the Holocaust and it is so important to re-tell the tale. There is much to learn.

Recently, I was surprised by the interest in the Holocaust evinced by the child of my colleague. Janet Braekel. She has been reading about the Holocaust for a few years. I asked 11-year-old Claire Braekel what fascinated her so about the Holocaust. She thought about is awhile and put her thoughts into words, "The Holocaust is something we can never forget. Its stories of tragedy and bravery seem so unreal, but are real and are captured in wonderful books. Without these books we wouldn't have all the knowledge we have of this intense and so very sad time in history."

End Notes

List of reference and other basic sources on the Holocaust:

American Jewish Year Book, American Jewish Committee, editors (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1899-).

Susan D. Bachrach, Tell Them We Remember: The Story of the Holocaust (Boston: Little, Brown, 1994).

Bearing Witness: Stones of the Holocaust, selected by Hazel Rochman and Darlene Z. McCampbell, (NY: Orchard Books, 1995).

Michael Berenbaum, The World Must Know: the history of the Holocaust as told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, (Boston: Little, Brown, 1993).

Harry J. Cargas, The Holocaust: An annotated bibliography (Chicago: American Library Association, 1985).

Dimensions: A Journal of Holocaust Studies, (New York: Anti-Defamation League, 1985-).

Abraham J. Edelheit and Hershel Edelheit, Bibliography on Holocaust Literature, (Boulder: Westview Pr., 1986).

Abraham J. Edelheit and Hershel Edelheit, History of the Holocaust: a handbook and dictionary (Boulder CO: West-view, 1994).

Encountering the Holocaust, Byron Sherwin, editor, (Chicago: Impact Pr., 1979).

Encyclopaedia Judaica, 16 v., (New York: Macmillan, 1972).

Encyclopedia of the Holocaust 4 v., Israel Gutman, editor in chief, (New York: Macmillan, 1990).

Eric Joseph Epstein and Philip Rosen, Dictionary of the Holocaust: Biography, Geography, and Terminology, (Westport, CT, 1997).

FDR and the Holocaust, Verne W. Newton, editor (New York: St. Martin's Pr., 1996).

Saul S. Friedman, Holocaust Literature: a handbook of critical, historical, and literary writings, (Westport Conn.: Greenwook Pr., 1993).

Martin Gilbert, Atlas of the Holocaust, (New York: Morrow, 1993).

Martin Gilbert, Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe during the Second World War (New York: Holt, 1986).

High-Tech Hate: Extremist Use of the Internet, (New York: Anti-Defamation League, 1997).

Holocaust 4 v. Geoffrey Wigoder, editor, (Danbury, Conn.: Grolier Educational, 1997).

Holocaust and Human Behavior: A Resource Guide (Boston: Facing History and Ourselves, 1994).

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Holocaust Denial: A Pocket Guide, (New York: Anti-Defamation League, 1997).

I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children's drawings and poems from Terezin Concentration Camps 1942-1944 (New York: Schocken, 1993).

Index to Jewish Periodicals: An Author and Subject Index to 109 English Language Journals of General and Scholarly Interest (Cleveland Heights, Ohio: Index to Jewish Periodicals, 1963-).

Jack Kugelmass and Jonathan Boyarin, From a Ruined Garden: the Memorial Books of Polish Jewry (New York: Schocken,1983).

David Morse, While Six Million Died (New York: Hart Publications, 1968).

Rachel Quenk in association with The Holocaust Human Rights Center of Maine, The Spirit That Moves Us: A Literature-Based Resource Guide, Teaching About the

Holocaust and Human Rights, (Gardiner, Maine: Tilbury House, 1997).

David M. Szonyi, The Holocaust: an annotated bibliography and resource guide (New York: Ktav, 1985).

Response: The Wiesenthal Center World Report, (Los Angeles, California: Simon Wiesenthal Center).

US Holocaust Memorial Museum Council, Historical Atlas of the Holocaust, (New York: Macmillan, 1996).

Voices of the Holocaust, Lone Jenkins McElroy, editor, (Detroit: UXL/Gale, 1998).

David Wyman, Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941-1945 (New York: Pantheon, 1984).

Yad Vashem Studies on the European Jewish Catastrophe and Resistance (Jerusalem, Israel: Published for Yad Vashem Remembrance Authority by the Publishing Department of the Jewish Agency, 1957-).

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